US Montessori Pre-K to UK Year 1

[Periclymenum]

Tl:dr - should I keep my new-to-British-school year 1 son in the year 1/year 2 class, or ask for him to be moved to the reception/year 1 class? He has only attended one day but has already said it was hard. Teacher has mentioned he didn’t seem to understand phonics.

Hi all, have just arrived back in UK from the US and our eldest son (5) has started at UK state primary school. There are low birth rates in our county for his school year, so year 1 is split - half of the year are R/yr 1 and the other half are yr 1/yr 2.

Our son has been put into the yr 2 split class but came home yesterday saying he ‘had to do letters’, and it was hard. He has done phonics in his previous school, but being Montessori there wasn’t a huge academic focus at his age - he seemed to understand at the time but not sure how much he really took in.

The teacher asked my husband at drop off this morning if he’d done phonics before, as he didn’t seem to understand. She didn’t mention it at pickup yesterday (just said he’d had a great day) so I wonder if it was me speaking to other mums (I know lots locally from the baby stage before we left UK) last night, querying the choice of class. Possibly has already got back to his teacher.

Classes should’ve been split based on age - my friends’ kids are all older so are in the yr 1/yr 2 class. However plenty of October kids are apparently in the younger class and my boy is January birthday

Semi-argument with my husband an hr ago - I’d rather get it right from the beginning and swap his class now rather than have him settle and have to start again. He says leave it to the teachers and he doesn’t want him going ‘down’ unnecessarily.

What would you do here? Obviously will see what his teacher says today. It is obviously pretty early to make a decision but that’s half the point as don’t want him to settle in then move. Thanks!!

My instinct is that with the two class options there are, the sensible/obvious place for a child who has not previously had explicit /formal phonics teaching is in the Reception/Y1 class rather than the Y1/Y2 class. It seems likely that would be better geared towards your son's needs at this point in time. Much better for him to be in the year R/Y1 class and thrive than in the Y1/2 class and struggle/lose confidence.

However, presumably there is a reason they put him in the Y1/Y2 class (either birth dates as you suggest, or there may not have been room in the other class) so it might not be as straightforward as asking to move him. I think in your situation I'd ask for a meeting with the teacher with a view to discuss how to support his learning given that he's never been taught phonics before. The possibility of the YR/Y1 class could then be broached as part of that general conversation.

FWIW, DS1 had a friend who joined in Y1 from US pre-K and she caught up with phonics astonishingly quickly- so it can definitely be done. But with the set up in your school I'd want to explore the possibility of moving.

What phonics has he done?
Just a-z or digraphs like
oa
or
th
Most of yr 1 would be reading independently at around yellow band.
So your dc may be behind even the yr1/r group
It might be that they set for math and eng.

Also being jan your dc is one of the oldest (middle being march)